A Deterministic Almost-Tight Distributed Algorithm for Approximating Single-Source Shortest Paths

We present a deterministic $(1+o(1))$-approximation $(n^{{1/2+o(1)}+D{1+o(1)})$-time} algorithm for solving the single-source shortest paths problem on distributed weighted networks (the CONGEST model); here $n$ is the number of nodes in the network and $D$ is its (hop) diameter. This is the first non-trivial deterministic algorithm for this problem. It also improves (i) the running time of the randomized $(1+o(1))$-approximation $\tilde O(n^{{1/2}D{1/4}+D)$-time} algorithm of Nanongkai [STOC 2014] by a factor of as large as $n^{1/8}$, and (ii) the $O(\epsilon^{-1}\log \epsilon^{{-1})$-approximation} factor of Lenzen and Patt-Shamir's $\tilde O(n^{{1/2+\epsilon}+D)$-time} algorithm [STOC 2013] within the same running time. Our running time matches the known time lower bound of $\Omega(n^{1/2}/\log n + D)$ [Elkin STOC 2004] up to subpolynomial factors, thus essentially settling the status of this problem which was raised at least a decade ago [Elkin SIGACT News 2004]. It also implies a $(2+o(1))$-approximation $(n^{{1/2+o(1)}+D{1+o(1)})$-time} algorithm for approximating a network's weighted diameter which almost matches the lower bound by Holzer and Pinsker [OPODIS 2015]. In achieving this result, we develop two techniques which might be of independent interest and useful in other settings: (i) a deterministic process that replaces the "hitting set argument" commonly used for shortest paths computation in various settings, and (ii) a simple, deterministic, construction of an $(n^{o(1)}, o(1))$-hop set of size $n^{1+o(1)}$. We combine these techniques with many distributed algorithmic techniques, some of which from problems that are not directly related to shortest paths, e.g., ruling sets [Goldberg et al. STOC 1987], source detection [Lenzen and Peleg PODC 2013], and partial distance estimation [Lenzen and Patt-Shamir PODC 2015].